


Ah!  Teen Titans, Go!

by WesUAH



Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series), ああっ女神さまっ | Ah! Megami-sama! | Oh My Goddess!
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Mystery, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-05 19:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1830424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WesUAH/pseuds/WesUAH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something strange in stirring in the world.  An attack on Titan's Tower leads the team to Nekomi, where they meet new friends, new enemies, and a threat from beyond time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

The demon Mara waited alone in her lair, the old abandoned arcade on the outskirts of Nekomi. No functional lights remained; she was lit only by moonlight, and by the candles she had set out for the summoning. The candles burned more red than orange, and flickered strangely upon the ancient game consoles, the glow almost washing out her red facial tattoos. Her eyes were closed and her head was bowed, and she heard only the steady drip drip drip of water, as she lurked with growing impatience.

A slight breeze rustled through the busted out windows and broken walls, disturbing her curled, blonde hair. She shivered, slightly – the wind always made her a bit nervous – and adjusted her perch on the old bench. The client was not late – yet – but neither was he early, and she really wanted to finish and seal this contract. Not only to increase the demons' share upon the earth, but because what she had offered in the contract made her really, really nervous.

She glanced at the aged parchment laying next to her on the bench. Much like the Lord of Terror's urn, it had come to her unbidden, attached to a standard order from Hell's catalog. Which alone should have suggested “do not touch”, to her, giving what had happened when she had followed the instructions from that thing. But, this piece of parchment did not speak to her, it had no voice of its own. It merely gave the requirements and instructions for a summoning, and stated that whomever of mortal kind performed the summoning would gain power to fulfill his every desire.

That, she knew, was most likely a lie. None of immortal kind ever made an open-ended offer like that to mortal kind. Not even the goddesses of Heaven would do something like that; while they demanded fewer codicils and costs than would a demon like her, they also only offered one wish per person. Granted, those wishes could be very open-ended, if the goddess allowed her client to wish so carelessly. But they had to allow it, and “power to fulfill his every desire” was _not_ the sort of wish that a goddess would encourage.

On the other hand, no hand of heaven had ever written upon that parchment. Of that much, she was wholly certain. Nor, for that matter, had any hand of Hell.

On the other other hand, a promise of “power to fulfill your every desire” made for good ad copy. A little bit of legwork, and little bit of putting a bug in the right person's ear-

She started upright at the sound of footsteps in the arcade. She grinned, baring one fang, and sent out a little bit of her power, igniting the other candles she had set in place throughout the arcade. They were arranged into a series of arrows, which would direct the client to where she waited.

Presently she heard the footsteps approach her. She looked up and saw the client standing in the doorway, silhouetted by red light from the candles behind him. Every time they had met prior – especially the times he did not know who he was meeting – he had worn an olive colored three-piece suit. Now he looked to be wearing blue jeans and an old hoodie; she only recognized him by his glasses. He also, she was glad to see, carried a large paper bag.

“Well, well, well,” she said. “Come on in. I was beginning to think you wouldn't show.”

“Please,” he said as he stepped into the room. His voice had a haughty, dismissive drawl, the voice of one who considered himself the obvious superior to everyone he ever met. “I always honor my business arrangements.”

_And that's_ all _you honor, I'll bet._ The arrogance in the man, combined with the underlying bitterness of one who had no real right to be bitter... ah, she hadn't had a more promising client since the Mishima girl! She let herself grin at him,  _evilly_ , as he walked up to the summoning circle.

“I see you finally changed clothes.”

The candlelight filled his glasses, obscuring his eyes.

“I normally don't come to _this_ side of town,” he said, with a winning smile and an audible sneer. “It seemed wise for a man of my station to travel incognito through such a place as this.”

“All too true,” she said, tossing her head back in mock sympathy. “You never know what sort of disreputable folk you might encounter, here in the darker places of life.”

“Spare me the philosophy, Mara,” he snapped. “You asked me to come here. Do you have what I wanted?”

“Just look down,” she said, and gestured at the circle. “There's one more step to take, but I needed you here for it. Did you bring the price?”

He tossed the bag at her feet. It landed with a soft thump, like a bag filled with very fine sawdust.

“My, my, you actually went and did it. I'd have expected that to be beneath you.”

“I take what I want, Mara, and when and how I want it. For what you offered? That was a small price to pay.”

_Oh yeah. Best client ever._

“Very well,” she said, and moved the bag aside with her foot. “Now if you'll just come over here-”

“Wait, I thought you needed that for the ritual?”

“Huh? Oh, the bag.” She turned and looked at the bag, then shrugged and looked back at him with a sly grin. “No, bringing me that was just the price to get to do the ritual. I never said it was a component of it.”

“Then why...”

“I just wanted to see if you would do it.”

“What?!”

“Listen, do you want to go through with this or not?” she snapped. “Now shut up and stop asking stupid questions, we've still got a lot to do here!”

“Fine. What do I need to do next?”

“First, you need to come over here,” Mara said. “Don't step on the circle, and don't step over the circle. There's one more key ingredient to this ritual, which you just happened to bring in with you.”

“And what ingredient would that be?” the client asked warily, as he very carefully stepped around the circle. She waited until he was just a few feet from her.

“What else? Rituals like this always need one little, teen tiny component,” Mara said, then pulled a jeweled and wickedly sharp knife out from her belt. She brandished it high, and the light from the candles reflected like dark sunfire from the damascene blade. “It lacks only a few drops of your blood!”

The client, to her full gratification, jumped back a good three feet. Sometimes it's the little things.

“Get away from me with that!” the client yelled. “I should have known this was some kind of assass-”

“Oh, get over yourself,” she said, letting out a breath and lowering the knife. “For one thing, there's no one out there who particularly wants you dead. Or, at least, they haven't wanted it hard enough to draw my attention. For another...” She shrugged, then expertly flipped the knife in the air, caught the tip of the blade, and then offered it to him hilt-first. “I'm not the one who'll be cutting on you. Spilling the blood is your job, big guy.”

The client stared at her, his eyes still hidden by the reflected candlelight. Gingerly, he stepped forward and took the knife from her. He held it like it was snake, but still pointed at her.

“You're awfully trusting, handing me this.”

She let just a bit more power flow out of her, not enough to do anything of real use, but enough to make a glow around her which drowned out the candlelight.

“If you think you can take on a first class demon with that thing,” she said slowly and quietly, “then you're quite welcome to try.”

He lowered the knife.

“Wasn't going to, just noting the fact. So now what?”

“Here, take this,” she said, and picked up the parchment. She would have sworn to Hild that it pulsed, then, like a heartbeat. But there was no point in worrying about that, as she handed it to client, since it was then quite literally out of her hands. “Just read it and do exactly what it says.”

He regarded the parchment even more dubiously than he had regarded the knife.

“Read it how? I have no idea what these letters-” He stopped and jumped back, but managed somehow not to drop the parchment. “I... what? It's in Japanese now? The kanji is perfect...”

“I couldn't read it at first, either,” Mara said. “It was in that strange tongue you just saw. But then it changed into the language of Hell... all except for those few lines near the bottom.”

“Near the... huh. Yeah, you're right. Strange, I actually...”

“You actually recognize the sounds, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“So did I, but I have no idea what they actually mean.”

“Me neither. Why didn't these change?”

“Those, I think, are the summoning words. What actually allows the entity being summoned to cross over into the mortal realm.”

“Entity...being summoned...”

“That's right,” she said, smiling as the hook caught. “This ritual summons a great and powerful entity, which will be bound to your service by the use of your blood.”  
  
Of course, she had made all that up. She had no idea what the ritual actually summoned, or if the use of the client's blood would bind the entity to him. However, blood used in such rituals did tend to have that effect, and no one would waste a ritual of this sort on anything but a very powerful being. Unless the parchment was some of sort of bizarre prank, to trick some unsuspecting soul into binding to herself a weakling imp, or perhaps a pebble-spirit.

If that happened, she was going to take the bag and run.

But somehow, she did not expect such an anti-climax.

The client read through the parchment once, stopped, and then read it through again, this time more slowly. A strange thing happened, at the second read-through: to Mara, the parchment no longer looked like parchment. As the client's eyes traced down the page, it took on a smoother, thicker texture, more like leather than parchment.

No, exactly like leather, she realized as the client began his third read-through, for the summoning instructions were written in blood upon a sheet of flayed and tanned human skin. There had been a glamor cast upon the instructions, to hide its true nature from anyone not actually performing the ritual, and now that glamor faded from her eyes, having served its purpose. A necessary purpose, she had to admit, as while she wanted to increase the demons' share upon the earth, she did not want to bring in the sort of trouble that would summoned up by following instructions written in blood!

That would just be stupid. Why had she thought this was a good idea, again?

Mara tried, then, to stop the client. But now the sheet of skin pulsed, as if a heart beat within it, and before she could even move, a _Presence_ in the skin brush against her mind and threw her to the floor. She could not even shout a warning, could only sit there in growing terror as the _Presence_ held her down, as the client took the knife and began to prick his fingers, one by one.

Each time he pricked a finger, he touched a small dab of blood to a certain point on the circle. Around each dab glowing runes appeared, spinning in a circle. As each set of runes completed one revolution, they were then copied by the summoning circle, and ran, glowing and humming, around its circumference. Each new set of runes added to the last, until by the tenth the runes filled the whole circumference, with no space between the beginning and the end.

The candles were long since extinguished, and the wind had long since fallen still. Lit now only by the glowing runes, his eyes still hidden behind his reflective glasses, the client stood above the circle, knife in his right hand. He let the instructions fall; the sheet landed in the middle of the circle, and stood upright. The blood-writ words glowed with their own red light.

Uttering the first lines of the summoning words, the client transferred the knife to his left hand. He drawled out the second set, his voice never changing, as he swiftly sliced the knife into his right palm. He squeezed his hand; blood oozed out between the fingers. With a voice like a gong, he uttered the third and final set of lines, and dashed a splatter of his blood across the circle and the sheet of skin.

And the circle opened.

Mara could feel the power of the summoning rushing through the circle, out of the mortal world, and into... She shuddered, once, and tried to slink away, but the hold from the _Presence_ in the skin remained. The summoning reach to a place far away from Heaven; to a place beyond even Hell; to a place and inhabitants which until then Mara would have sworn were just a myth.

But as all sound in the arcade ceased, as all light was extinguished, as the circle became a dark and silent emptiness which shone like the sun and rang out like a thousand gongs, she knew that place was no myth. And as the great faceless _thing_ came up out of the circle, as _pieces_ of it reached out for her and for the client, she knew the inhabitants were no myth, and that she had just conspired to let loose on of those inhabitants in the city.

And still she could not move, and still she could not even cry out. She could only sit there and quiver and cry and watch as the grasping, gnawing, _pieces_ drew ever closer to her.

Then a new light filled the room, a rushing, purple-red light from behind her. Mara felt strong hands grasp her under the arms, and then pull her sharply back across the floor, away from the _pieces_ and into... a newly opened portal. The arms shifted, wrapping around her belly, and she had the welcome sensation flying through a portal-between-worlds. She turned her head and looked up.

Carrying her was a woman, whose luxurious, white hair and violet eyes set off her caramel skin. She wore a purple gown, which was somehow both skin-tight and flowing. That gown was open down the front, exposing all of her cleavage and coming to a point just past her navel. Of course, Mara couldn't see all of that, as she was presently pressed up against that opening, but she had seen her rescuer enough to be familiar with her mode of dress.

“Lady Hild!”

“Mara, dear, just what were you thinking?” said Lady Hild, the Queen of Hell. It astonished Mara that she had come in her adult, fully powered form. Even the jewelry which bound her power had been removed, allowing her body-length white hair to flow freely. “Did the debacle with the Lord of Terror teach you nothing? Or Celestine? Or _Trigon_? There are simply some things which must not be let into the mortal world.”

“I... I'm very sorry, Lady Hild!” Mara exclaimed, trying very hard to bow repeatedly in supplication without slipping free of Hild's grasp.

“Oh, it's far, far too late for apologies. What you've let into the world... and don't even _think_ of thanking me for pulling you out of there, after what I had to cut through to get to you.”

“Cut... through...?” At last, Mara noticed the bruises and cuts on Hild's face, one running straight across the six-pointed star on her forehead, the deep weariness in her violet eyes. So there had been a fight. Lady Hild had gone to war... to rescue her?

She started to tear up, but a quelling glance from Hild stopped her from gushing.

“Lady Hild?” she asked into the silence.

“Hmm?”

“Should... shouldn't we go back and warn them?”

Hild let out a breath.

“I had to fold space and time too much to get us out of there without being pursued,” Hild said, her face full of regret. “By the time we'd get back to Nekomi, it'd be all over. My daughter... her sisters, are on their own.”


	2. Chapter 2

Episode 1 - Ah! Who are These People?

JUMP CITY

“C'mon, BB, you can do better than that!” Cyborg crowed. His electronic eye glowed red as his hands furiously worked the controller to the video game system; in response, his character executed a perfect backflip and spiked Beast Boy's character right off the platform.

“Boo-yah! That's th- huh?” To his great consternation, as Beast Boy's character soared off the screen, he finally noticed a blinking... thing... attached to his character. Then the blinking thing exploded, and both of their characters flew off the screen at the exact same time. He stared at the TV, his mouth somewhere around the floor.

“I think that means we're still tied,” Beast Boy said, not even trying to not sound smug.

“You... how... This is why you're supposed to play Final Destination, no items!”

“Aw, that's no fun,” Beast Boy said, as their characters reappeared on the stage. “You're supposed to be able to hit each other with bats, fire a zapper, throw bombs...”

“Use cheap moves... take advantage of the stage...”

“Hey, you're the one who let me get eaten by that giant whale thing.”

“Man, that was three games ago! What about the move you pulled on the airship, with the bat?”

“Yeah,” Best boy said with a wide, complacent grin, “that was pretty good.”

Cyborg growled something unintelligible as their characters set about to what would hopefully be the last round of combat. They were each at two game wins for the night, and tied on KOs for this game. Just one more good punch, and...

“So what are you two playing for?” Raven asked, as she leaned over the back of the couch. Cyborg did not turn to look at her; that was just what Beast Boy would expect.

“What do you mean?” Beast Boy asked, also, to Cyborg's regret, not taking his attention away from the screen.

“I mean, what do you get if you win?”

Cyborg thought about it.

“Bragging rights until the next set of games?”

Raven let out an exasperated sigh and hung her head. They continued playing (Cyborg almost had Beast Boy, once, but then he found a one-hundred percent healing item and as such was no longer in danger of being slammed off the stage). Out the corner of his eye Cyborg watched Raven shake her head in fond exasperation. At least, he hoped it was fond.

Then she slammed a hand on the back of the couch and stood upright.

“Right, that's it. I'm playing winner.”

Cyborg and Beast Boy both whipped their heads around to stare at her, slack-jawed and bug-eyed. On the screen, and Cyborg barely noticed this through his shock, their characters stopped face-to-face with each other. Beast Boy's dropped the mine he had been about to throw. It plopped on the ground between them, ticked and flashed a bit, and then exploded, throwing both of their characters off the screen, continuing the tie.

“You... you never play...” Beast Boy whispered. Then he narrowed his eyes, stood on the couch, and stared at her suspiciously.

“Who are you and what have you done with Raven?”

“Stop breathing on me.”

“Okay, maybe you are Raven.”

“What's up, Rae?” Cyborg asked quietly, having recovered himself. “Didn't figure this was your sort of thing, or we'd have brought out the third controller.”

She shrugged.

“Figured I'd like to... try?”

She actually smiled. Cyborg and Beast Boy traded a surprised and worried look.

“Um, Raven?” Beast Boy said, quietly. “Is there... something we should know about?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“No? Why?”

“Because the last time you wanted to do stuff like this, Trigon was invading,” Cyborg said.

“You wanting to have fun usually means bad things are about to happen,” Beast Boy added.

“No it doesn't,” she snapped. “I have fun all the time.”

“Our kind of fun.”

“Ah. Look, guys, nothing like that's about to happen.”

“No Trigon?”

“He can't come back here. Not anymore.”

“No alien invasions?”

“You'd have to ask Starfire.”

“No extradimensional whatsits?”

“Not that I know of.”

“So nothing bad is about to happen?”

“No! Maybe I just... want to play the game...”

They stared at her some more. Then at each other. Then back at her.

“Okay,” Cyborg said brightly. “Raven plays winner!”

“You're _sure_ nothing bad is about to happen,” Beast Boy said, apparently still suspicious.

“Positive,” Raven said, then shrugged again. “Actually... it's because... things are going pretty well. We beat Trigon, we beat the Brotherhood of Evil... we've got the new Titan teams in place. Maybe it's time to relax a bit.”

“Raven,” Cyborg began, then stopped when he heard a victory noise coming from the TV. He turned, mouth dropping _again_ , to see his character flying off the side of the screen.

“Did you... did you just ninja me? Did you just ninja me with a _baseball bat?!_ ”

“Looks like I get to play Raven,” Beast Boy said with a giant grin.

“You little-” Cyborg said, starting towards him. Then a black sphere formed around the controller, and gently floated it out of his hand. He stopped and sat back, and watched it float away to hover just in front of Raven.

“You know you're supposed to hold that, right?” Beast Boy said.

“Please. Didn't you see what Silkie did to the game cabinet yesterday?” She smirked at the them both.

“Great,” Beast Boy said. “Now I need to go wash my hands.”

“Careful, Rae,” Cyborg said. “He plays cheap.” He leaned back against one arm of the couch. “Can't believe it, cut out of my own game...”

“You get to play winner,” Beast Boy and Raven said, in unison. They all three stared at each other, then, until Cyborg shook his head, laughed, and waved them on.

“Then one of you had better win.”

He settled down to wait and look out the front window, as Beast Boy and Raven picked new characters and argued over stage selection.

_And Raven's right,_ he thought near-contentedly.  _Things have been going_ great _for us, lately. Crime's down, we don't actually have to be 'on' 24-7, and there haven't been in any world threatening aliens or megalomaniacs in months. Best streak we've ever had_ .

He looked out on the city and smiled fondly.

_Heck, even Robin and Starfire are getting to try to have a_ life, he thought.  _Not that the bad guys are letting them have it easy. But I think we managed to clear the road for them tonight. And if anyone's earned a peaceful night-_

The elevator chime sounded, interrupting his thoughts. He connected the computerized portion of his mind to the security system, and scanned through the recent feed, wondering why the tower had not alerted him to an arrival. That would only happen if the arrival had certain pass-codes, which he only-

Oh, right. He checked the elevator cameras.

“Huh. They're back early...”

He turned on the couch to face the elevator, as Robin and Starfire stepped out into the common room. Robin was still in his tux, though the bow tie was a bit askew, and Starfire was still in her gloves and sparkly pink dress. For a moment he wondered why he attached words like 'still' to their appearance, until his brain caught up with his sensors and he noticed, consciously, that they were looking a bit scuffed up and frazzled.

“Oh, hey guys,” he called as they straggled in. “How was the concert...?”

“It was wonderful,” Starfire gushed, pressing her hands together. “I had no idea this city had musicians of such skill!”

“Yeah, it was terrific. For about five minutes,” Robin groused.

“What happened after five minutes?”

“Umm,” Starfire said, glancing worriedly at Robin. “The Punk Rocket decided to crash the concert.”

“And we had to fight him,” Robin said. “Kinda put the end to Ravel.”

“They couldn't start back up after you were done?” Raven asked, having paused the game.

“Rocket shattered the lead oboe,” Robin explained.

“And the first chair violin, and half the violas...” Starfire added.

“...and you don't even want to know what he did to the tuba,” Robin said with a sigh. “After that, there wasn't really much point in continuing.”

“Dude...” Beast Boy said.

“So we decided to go for a walk in the park,” Starfire continued. “Which is quite lovely at this time of night.”

“Yeah, yeah it was,” Robin said, brightening slightly, then he sighed and glowered again. “Then Gizmo showed up. And Cinderblock.”

“Oooh.”

“They might have the park put back together in a couple of weeks.”

“So... bad night?” Cyborg said. Unnecessarily, he figured, but he needed to say something.

“Ehn?” Robin replied, moving a hand side-to-side. “More of the same, I guess.”

“Oh, yeah, wasn't it Plasmus last week?”

“Johnny Rancid. And Adonis the week before that, and....”

Cyborg winced as Robin recounted the past month's worth of villainous interruptions to his and Starfire's dates. He and Raven and Beast Boy had tried, really, to... discourage the bad guys from pulling a stunt. On two of those dates they had even pulled guard duty, surreptitiously following Robin and Starfire and trying to keep the bad guys from causing a ruckus. But they always missed one. They even thought they had everybody local cleared out, which was why they had stayed home for this one. But clearly they had missed three.

Well, two. The last Cyborg had heard, Cinderblock was  _supposed_ to be on permanent lockdown. In jail. Held in place with a graviton beam. And encased in bakelite.

“And just once, just _once_ ,” Robin finished, now in full rant mode, “I'd like for a date to go _right_!”

“Come, now, it was not all bad,” Starfire said gently, hooking her arm through Robin's. “Yes, it may have ended in violence and mayhem, but dinner went perfectly.”

Robin brightened, slightly. Cyborg tried very hard not to smile.

“Yeah, that part went well, at least...” He soured again. “The rest of it... Starfire...”

“And, well,” she said, her green eyes bright, “at least we were together?”

Robin brightened fully, and smiled at her helplessly. Cyborg did not even bother trying not to smile. He glanced over at the other two; Beast Boy grinned openly, and even Raven looked... pleased.

“You know, there is that.”

“So any plans for the rest of the night?” Cyborg said slyly after they had stood there and smiled at each for just a little bit too long. It was strangely gratifying to see them turn bright red and look away from each other. “Yeah. That's what I figured.”

“Actually... I think it's about time to get some sleep,” Robin said, regaining his composure. He disengaged from Starfire – with clear reluctance – and started to pull off his slightly worn bow tie. “Been a busy night.”

“I think I too may try to get some sleep,” Starfire announced, trading A Look with Robin. “We _were_ in two fights, after all.”

“Yep. What are you guys doing?”

“Well, BB and Rae are going best three out of five,” Cyborg said, cocking a thumb at the TV. “I've got winner.”

“Great... wait. Raven? _Video game?_ ”

“We already asked, nothing terrible is about to show up.”

Then the windows, forward wall, and TV screen exploded. The blast rolled the couch across the floor, sending the three Titans flying. Cyborg barely got his tumble under control, and only stopped when Raven used her powers to catch him and Beast Boy. He shot her a thumbs-up, then looked behind him; Starfire had Robin by the shoulders, and had flown the two of them up into the air to avoid the rolling couch.

He looked back at what had been the TV. Smoke and dust filled the air; all he could see were five, then six, then ten vaguely human-shaped silhouettes. The environmental systems came online, then, and blew the dust and smoke out the great hole in the wall, and then Cyborg could see the now two-dozen shapes all to well.

They were robots, primarily black, with gray steel plates at the neck and shoulders, the shins and wrists. Their eyes glowed red, and a single orange oval decorated their face. They were the robot commandos of the madman Slade, which the Titans had not faced in battle for nearly three years.

“Raven!” Beast Boy cried. “You said nothing bad was going to happen!”

She thwacked him upside the head.

“You just can't leave it alone, can you,” Cyborg heard Robin mutter. “Can't even allow me one night...”

The robot commandos began to advance. There was something off about their movements; they moved more like a hunting animal than like a human. He wondered if-

“Titans! Go!”

At Robin's call, Cyborg crouch down, changed his right arm into a cannon, and then fired two quick bursts at the robot commandos. He then sprang into motion, firing as he charged. Beside him Raven flew forward, dark lines of energy stretching forth from her hands, to smash and slice and do horrible and unmentionable things to the-

“Last one to smash a Sladebot is a rotten egg!” Beast Boy called as he transformed into a green Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Okay, to the Sladebots, then.

“This isn't a game!” Raven called back, as Beast Boy slammed into the approaching mass of ro- Sladebots. She kept the Sladebots from overwhelming him, and Cyborg kept up a steady stream of fire to keep the Sladebots from overwhelming _her_. Then about a dozen starbolts shot over his head, Robin and Starfire were charging forward on his left, Raven and Beast Boy were occupied on his right, and things got a bit a busy for a few seconds.

When he could look up and think again, he realized that the main room was almost clear. But that there were a lot more than two dozen Sladebots on the floor. With more climbing through the hole in the wall. They were _crawling_ , almost bug-like, through the _top_ of the hole and then up to and across the ceiling. A few other came through the side, crawling across the walls. Some dropped to floor, most looked to be trying to take them from the sides and from above.

He growled, shifted fire, and called up a security overlay.

“Yo, Robin!” he called. “Looks like we've got some up on the roof!”


	3. Chapter 3

“How many?” Robin yelled back, as he threw off one last Sladebot. The real problem with formal wear, he thought grumpily as he shed his now shredded jacket, was not that it gave an enemy a lot of good handholds. Which it did, and which he found very annoying; he would not even bother with the penguin suit except that Starfire gave him _that_ look whenever he put it on. The real problem was that he had to leave a lot of his normal tricks behind, like his reinforced and armored boots and gloves. Which made fighting robots something of a literal pain.

“About two dozen, but I think it's the _last_ two dozen!”

And then he was clear. He stood there in his black pants, white dress shirt, and suspenders. The jacket lay in tatters upon the wrecked remains of a couple of Sladebots, and his bow tie was long gone.

“Right. Think you three can hold here?”

Cyborg turned and shot him a grin.

“Assuming you two can clear the roof.”

He grinned back.

“Not a problem. Starfire! You clear? We need to hit the roof!”

He heard her fire off a few more starbolts behind him – two of which impacted very close to his back – and then Starfire took him under the arms again and they were in the air.

“You need to pay more attention,” she said as they approached the ceiling. “Two of them were crawling up behind you.”

He reached across his chest and rested one hand on hers. Then they were at the ceiling, and the hidden port Cyborg had installed irised open and let them in. It was just barely wide enough for the two of them; Starfire had to go full vertical to fit them through. He was pressed up against her, his legs trailing below, the folds of her dress wrapping and whipping around them.

“That's what I get for fighting tired,” he said, as the noise of battle faded away. “Good thing you're here to watch my back.”

“Always.”

Then they were through. The top port irised open as well, letting them out into the cool night air. He looked down as they flew up and up; twenty of the Sladebots were still on the roof. A few of those looked to be about to climb down into the tower, but those turned away from the edge and looked up at himself and Starfire. Some of the Sladebots were standing, but most were strangely hunched over, as if they used their arms as a second pair of legs.

They flew up for a moment more, superimposed against the full moon, then Starfire pitched over, rolled, and soared at the roof top. As they neared, Robin lets his arms slip out of her grasp, until he hung perpendicular to her, held up only by her hands in his. He gauged the distance, rocking back and forth, as she cleared a landing area with a few eyebeam blasts. Then he squeezed her right hand, and she started swinging him back and forth, slowly at first, then faster-

Then he squeezed her left hand, at just the right time, and she let him loose, flinging him into the empty air.

He sailed forward, and struck one of the Sladebots in the chest, feet first. He rode that one to the roof, his legs bent and tensed. When it struck the roof he bounded off, executed a hand spring off the shoulders of a second Sladebot, and then landed in splayed out crouch right in the middle of them. They closed in on him, crawling on all fours, moving with a strange, animalistic grace. He let them come, then reached up behind him with his right hand, and drew his extendable staff from where he had secured it before even leaving the tower. He popped it open, gave it a quick one-handed twirl behind his back, then drew his legs in and sprang up.

His leap carried him up and towards the closest Sladebot; as he came down he angled his staff and drove one end of it into the Sladebot's neck. The blow pinned the bot to the roof. He twisted in the air and shifted his grip on the staff, expertly changing his forward motion into angular momentum. He spun around the staff, slamming the soles of his feet into the heads of the two closest Sladebots which were actually standing.

And then Starfire was there, her dress glittering in the moonlight and the glow of her starbolts, a joyous and fierce grin splitting her face as she joined in the battle. Each starbolt struck home, destroying one of the Sladebots which had gathered around the first one he had downed. In a blink he had a clear spot, popped his staff free, and landed on his feet on the roof, back to back with her.

They stood for a moment, his staff at a ready guard, her starbolts glowing and humming, almost eager in her hands. The animalistic Sladebots – all eight of them, now – crowded around and closed in on them from all sides. He grinned, all his frustrations gone and spent in the fight. He had his weapon in hand, the most beautiful and strongest woman in the world at his back, and no pack of crazy robots was going to-

Then the Sladebots _howled_.

He dropped his staff, his hand left numb by a sudden terror. Nothing he had ever seen, neither man nor beast, whether on Earth or Tamaran or any of the worlds in between, had ever made anything like that sound. Nothing in even the legions of Trigon had made a noise to compare to that. It cut deep into him, reached straight into the lizard hind-brain and grabbed and squeezed and _twisted_ -

He pressed up against Starfire's back, his eyes wide, his breathing labored, his whole body shaking as the howling, robotic beasts closed in on him in seeming slow motion. His heart pounded hard against his chest, and he could see his own death in their glowing, electronic eyes. Visions of dripping fangs and a yawning, eternally empty void filled his mind, blocking out moon and stars and city and tower, until all he knew was the threat of death-

A few wisps of long, red hair brushed against his cheek, and flitted in and out of his view.

“Robin?”

The vision faded. With a furious snarl he dove forward, grabbed his staff, and fell into a roll. He heard one of the Sladebots howl again, but this time the sound brought no naked, unreasoning terror, and no strange and fell glamors. The howling Sladebot charged him, but he met it coming out of his roll; he slammed his staff end-first into its midsection, impaling it and levering it into the air. With a cry and a hard swing, he flung the Sladebot into the two others, sending them howling to the earth below.

At a flicker of movement to his right he sprang into the air, barely dodging as another Sladebot dove at him. He flipped over once, and landed once again right behind Starfire. Then the remaining Sladebots were upon them, and for a few brief seconds his world was nothing but flailing limbs and starbolts and howls.

Until at last he found himself crouching upon the sparking and shattered remains of one of the last Sladebots. It stared at him with a single, glowing red eye. It twitched once, twice, thrice, as if trying to throw him off. Then it gave on last, hideous howl, as something sparked and popped in the opened portions of its head, and with an electronic whine the red glow faded to darkness. As it faded a boiling miasma, like oily smoke, flowed out of the Sladebot. He stared at the strange sight as it coalesced into a rolling, gaseous clump; then, before he could react or cry out, it shot away into the west, and passed over the sea.

Robin rolled off the Sladebot and sat flat on the roof, breathing harder than even the fight could account for. He lost track of time, for a while, until he realized that that Starfire had a hand on his shoulder, and was gently shaking him and calling his name... and that he had a deathgrip on her other hand.

“Star!” he said, quickly relaxing his grip. “Sorry, I... I'm... are you all right?”

“I am... uninjured,” she said, uncertainly. “All right enough, for now. But I am more worried about you.”

He tried to smile.

“I'm okay, Starfire, really,” he said, and started to stand.

She got her other hand on his other shoulder and held him down.

“No, you are not,” she said gently, her voice and eyes full of concern. “Robin, what happened?”

“I said I'm-”, he snapped, then cut himself off and turn away. He felt, more than saw, her hang her head slightly. He sighed, half ashamed of himself, then turned back to her and leaned his head against hers. “I'm sorry, Star,” he said, quietly. “I... you're right. I'm not okay. Just not used to being that... scared, I guess.”

“It is forgiven,” she whispered. “Robin, I have only seen you that... afraid... once before. When you were gassed, and thought you were fighting Slade.” She left a lot of things unsaid, in that reference, but he got the substance of her concern all the same. He had nearly died, that day, fighting someone who was only in his mind.

“I'd... kinda made that connection myself, just a second ago,” he said, nodding. He let their proximity turn the nod into a nuzzle, and was rewarded with a warm, half-smile. “But this was different. Less visceral, but more... intense, in a way.” He stopped, thought for a second. “Starfire, you _did_ hear them howl, didn't you?”

He felt her shiver against him, which was all the answer he needed. Without even needing to say a word, they drew each other into a hug.

“I did _not_ like that sound,” she said into his shoulder.

“Did it come with a mind-whammy for you, too?”

“I did not like _that_ , either. It was... it was...”

“Like something with lots of teeth and stomach as big as the universe was going to eat us.”

“Exactly,” she said with a sigh. “And then... and then you stumbled into me. And the vision faded.”

He laughed.

“That's funny, because mine ended when I felt your hair brush against me. Because the visions weren't real,” he said, squeezing her tighter, “but _we_ are.”

They pulled apart, then, but only slightly; his hands remained on her shoulders, while her fingers rested lightly on his cheeks. They smiled tiredly at each other.

“Not quite what I had planned for date night,” he said.

“I would hope not, no,” she said, laughing. “But... at least we are victorious?”

He glanced from left to right.

“Yeah, I'd call this one a win. And we're still alive.”

“And together.”

“Hey,” he said, and ran a hand down her arm, from her should to her fingers. He took her hand in his, and brought it softly to his lips. “Always.”

 

* * *

 

“Yeah, they howled down here, too,” Cyborg told him a few minutes later, after he and Starfire had returned to the wrecked common room. “Raven managed to block the mind-whammy, though.”

Robin turned to look at her, raising one corner of his mask with his eyebrow. She just shrugged.

“I felt... something, coming at us behind the howl,” she explained. “Cyborg and Beast Boy were close enough that I could throw up a shield.”

“Did you recognize what it was?”

Raven shook her head.

“It looked... similar, to... to Trigon. But that was a glamor, not its true form or nature. Sorry, Robin, but it hid itself too well. I don't know what it was.”

He nodded.

“Not your fault, Raven. We got a bit blindsided on this one.” He leaned heavily against the wall, and let his gaze trace over the wreckage and his circled friends. “On the other hand, that does tell us something about whoever did this.”

“How's that?” Cyborg asked.

“It tell us that whoever did this knows what Trigon is, and my connection to him,” Raven said, nodding.

“Exactly. Not much to go on now, but it's a clue.”

“So, until this clue helps us find the guy who did this,” Beast Boy said, waving at the wreckage, “what do we do next?”

“Grab brooms?”

“I think we'll need a bulldozer,” Cyborg added.

“Man,” Beast Boy, whined, his ears sagging, “I _knew_ you were gonna say that...”


	4. Chapter 4

“Seriously? You couldn't find anything?” Robin exclaimed.

They had spent most of the night cleaning up the pieces, carefully sorting between tower-bits and Sladebot-bits. The tower-bits were set aside for either repair or recycling. The Sladebot-bits they sent downstairs for automated forensic examination.

Which had turned up precisely bupkiss.

“It's weird,” Cyborg agreed, staring at the readouts. “But we captured five of their brains intact. No damage, no overloads, no delete commands... as best the computer can tell, nothing, not a single piece of software, was ever installed on these things. I can run a manual diagnostic, tell the computer what to look for, but...”

“But if the automated system didn't find anything, there isn't anything to find,” Robin said, sighing. “Let's run one anyway, just to be sure.” He leaned over the pile of bits, picked up a head, and fiddled with it some. Then he straightened and set it down. “Actually... did we include arcane energies as part of the standard search package?”

“You know, I don't think we did,” Cyborg said, pressing a few keys. “Never expected to have to search for those in robot parts. But we're doing so now.”

“Yeah, this going to be an odd one. I just wish we could find a functional GPS unit.”

“Back track it, see where it came from?”

“Exactly.” Robin picked up the Sladebot's head again, and started gesturing with it. “We searched out and destroyed every single cache of these things that we could find, after Terra threw Slade into the lava. That was three years ago.”

“I guess we missed one.”

“I guess _Slade_ missed one, since we were working from his own records.”

“Kept one off the books?”

“Looks like. But where, and why, are my questions.”

“Think he's back?”

Robin looked at the head, sighed, and then tossed it back into the parts pile. He started to pace across the examination room.

“Look, I know I'm the guy who's supposed to see a Slade behind every shadow and doorknob,” he said. “But... no. There was something... else, behind these things, something just a bit uncanny, and I would think that after Trigon even _Slade_ would learn not to mess with the uncanny!” He stopped pacing, tossed his head, then started back to pacing. “But it's an option, and it'd be just as dumb to take the option off the table as to chase it obsessively. Slade stays on the suspect list. But he's way down the list, this time.”

“So who tops the list?”

“I... honestly don't know,” Robin admitted. “I would have said Trigon, but according to Raven, he's sealed away from Earth for a long, long time. Mumbo?”

“Doesn't really seem his style. Not zany enough.”

“No, no your right. It's funny; we've fought shapeshifters, carnival strong men, thieves, megalomaniacs a time traveler, a talking ape, and a brain in a jar. But arcane villains have been a little bit thin on the ground.”

“Maybe call in one of the other teams? Get some outside expertise?”

“Couldn't hurt. Aren't Jinx and Kid Flash still in town?” He saw something flicker across Cyborg's face, at the mention of Jinx, but decided not to pursue it. They had... talked, a while aback, about some of what went on the time Cyborg had infiltrated the H.I.V.E. Academy.

“I think so,” was all Cyborg actually said.

“Once were done processing this stuff, let's call in Jinx, at least,” Robin said, as mercifully as he could. Yes, something had passed between those two at the Academy, and yes, it was a bit of a sore point with Cyborg. But they might just need the ex-villainess' magical expertise. He banged one hand against Cyborg's shoulder, to let the other man know that he understood. Cyborg snorted in reply, but nodded slightly.

Then the computer dinged.

“Manual diagnostic complete! All right!” Cyborg said, turning back to the computer. “Let's see what this bad boy turned up...”

Robin leaned over Cyborg's chair to watch. That had been a really fast diagnostic.

“Huh, that's odd...” Cyborg said.

“What is it?”

“The diagnostic didn't finish. It set it to run the programming and arcane energies searches first, and it pinged... huh. Still no programming but it pinged on a definite arcade residue.”

“In the the Sladebot's brain?”

“In the brain, in the motors, in the structural supports...”

“Wait, are you saying those Sladebots were being run by magic?”

“It'd explain a lot of things.”

“That...” Robin started, indignantly, but then he trailed off thoughtfully. “That _would_ explain a lot, now that you mention it. Like that howl.”

“And how they moved.”

“Can you identify the energy signature?”

Cyborg tapped a few more keys, then shook his head.

“Almost, but no entirely unlike, Trigon's.”

“That'd be the glamor, then,” came a voice from the door. Robin and Cyborg both turned to see Raven, Starfire, and Beast Boy enter the examination room. Each carried a box full of pieces.

“I guess you found something,” Robin said. He had refused to allow a sortie outside the tower until daybreak, and even then only after everyone had had at least some sleep.

“Only the two you knocked off the roof,” Starfire said as they added their boxes to the pile.

“Only those? Nothing else?”

“Not a thing,” Beast Boy confirmed, changing into a bloodhound and then back again. “No tracks, no flighty thingies, nothing.”

“And I'm not sure how much help these will be,” Raven said, as she pawed through one of the boxes. “Both brains got smashed on landing.”

Robin and Cyborg traded a look.

“...but I'm getting the feeling the brains wouldn't have helped much anyway.”

Briefly, Robin and Cyborg filled the other three in on what they had found – or, rather, what they _not_ found – inside the intact Sladebot brains.

“Okay, that is just too creepy,” Beast Boy said. “No programming at all?”

“Total blank slate,” Cyborg confirmed. “Just that same energy signature Raven told us about.”

“So the same energy that hit you two,” Raven said, looking between Robin and Starfire, “was also driving the... Sladebots?”

“Looks like?”

“Robin?” Starfire said, uncertainly.

“What is it, Star?” he said, turning to her. She had her head titled, regarding him with a very strange expression, her eyes narrowed, and her brow furrowed.

“The last Sladebot on the roof,” she said, slowly, as if she had to draw the words out of herself syllable by syllable. “The one you were on top of. Something... happened, after it sparked and died, did it not?”

“I...” He started to say that he had no idea what she was talking about, but then he started to think about it. “I don't... you know, Star, all of sudden that part of last night is really, really fuzzy. But only that part.”

“Something... came out of it?” she said, closing her eyes and resting her head in her hand. “And then it... flew off? It is all a blur, and I cannot-”

She went quiet and her face started to blank, as if she were drifting away into sleep. But her eyes moved, rapidly, behind her lids, like in a dream.

“Starfire, back out,” Robin said, putting both concern and a command into his voice. “It looks like we got mind-whammied after all.”

“I... yes, I believe you are right,” she said, opening her eyes and shaking herself. “It is not... painful to try and remember, but the image just slips away.”

“Its probably both a block and a trap,” he said, and she nodded in agreement. “No point in either of us getting stuck in our own heads.”

She nodded again, then traded a quick look with Raven. Raven traded a careful and cautious look with the both of them, but then nodded. And Robin caught on.

“It'd be risky,” he said. “I don't want to put you in danger, either, Raven.”

“I'm not too thrilled with putting myself in danger,” she said, dryly. “But we need to at least try and get at what's in your head.”

“Umm, what are you guys talking about?” Beast Boy asked.

“Raven's going to try and go into my mind, and see if she can find out what we saw last night,” Robin said.

“Who said anything about going into your mind?” Starfire said.

“Are you sure that's a good idea?” Beast Boy said, at the same time as Starfire.

“Not really,” Raven said, pulling her hood back over her head. “But we need to try. And Starfire? I've been in his mind before, remember? We've only switched bodies; it'll be easier for me to spot anything wrong with him.”

“But... but...”

“We'll be okay, Star,” Robin said, grinning with a reassurance he did not really feel. He had every trust in Raven, but there was enough weirdness going on that he could not guarantee, even with that trust, that everything would turn out okay. But he had hope enough, and enough faith in his friends to try. “Raven? Let's do it.”

She let out a breath and approached him, her eyes drifting closed. He closed his as well, matched her breathing, felt her fingers touch his forehead-

-and the next thing he knew Starfire was calling out to him and trying to lift him up off the floor.

“Whazzagaga?” he uttered sagely.

“Robin! Are you okay?”

“Immma... mrglethrp... blah...,” he said, then shook himself and let her sit him up. “ _I'm_ ,” he said, making the effort to enunciate, “okay, Star. What just... Raven?”

He looked around then, saw Beast Boy helping her to sit up, and Cyborg hovering over the lot of them.

“I'm okay, I'm okay,” Raven muttered, catching her breath. She looked at him and smiled, ruefully. “Well. Let's not try _that_ again.”

“What happened,” he said, a bit more sharply than he had intended.

“There's about five seconds of your memory that's totally blocked off,” Raven explained, as she let Beast Boy help her to her feet. “I think you're right about it being both a block and a trap, for the two of you at least, but it wouldn't even let me get close to it, before...” She shrugged. “Before boom. You two definitely saw something you weren't supposed to see.”

He and Starfire traded a look.

“Perhaps if you tried mine...?”

“Not a chance, Starfire,” Raven said, shaking her head. “The same thing would just happen again, and probably worse. I don't know your mind well enough to avoid the tripwires.

“It's a powerful, subtle working in there,” she continued, pulling her hood over her head and steadying herself. “The worst part is, whoever laid that trap in place was also powerful enough to not only do so quickly, but to completely mask who and what they were. There's no trace, no signature, nothing. Just a few tripwires, the block and trap.”

“So what do we do about it?”

“Try not to think about what you saw? I'll work on a fix, but... like you said, it's targeted on that one, specific point in time. Just don't think too hard about those five seconds.”

“So noted,” he said, squeezing Starfire's arm gently and standing.

“So that lead's a dead end,” Cyborg said.

“Trust me,” Raven said, stalking towards the boxes of parts, “you really don't want to use the word dead in this situation.”

“That bad?”

“Think logic bomb,” Raven said, as she started rummaging through the parts they had brought up. “Only biological... now where'd you go... ah-hah!” she cried, and pulled something out of the box. “ _That_ lead didn't pan out, but I think this one just might.”

“Is that a...” Robin said, grinning.

“Yep,” Raven said, holding up the small, orange-colored box. She tossed it up and down a couple of times. “A GPS tracker from one of the Sladebots. And I think,” she continued, turning it over to show a blinking light, “that it still works.”

 

* * *

 

Compared to analyzing arcane residue from a few dozen wrecked Sladebots, downloading and back-tracing the data from the GPS tracker was almost absurdly simple. Robin had found himself grinning at Cyborg's snort of disgust when they found that the tracker did not even have a firewall installed. Nor even a single layer of data encryption. They had the data pulled and processed within five minutes.

“Well, there it is,” Robin said, looking at the little red dot on the map which indicated, roughly, the Sladebot's starting point. “That was easy.”

“Almost too easy,” Cyborg said, completely serious. “Trap?”

“Trap.”

“We going anyway?”

“Yep.”

“One of these days,” Beast Boy said, peeking over Cyborg's shoulder at the computer, “we're going to have to go to Japan _without_ it being a trap. At least we get to go to Tokyo again.”

“Not Tokyo,” Robin said, pointing at the map. “More like Yokohama.”

Cyborg rolled his eyes and hit the zoom button.

“Not even Yokohama,” he said. “Some placed called Nekomi.”

 

* * *

 

NEKOMI

_Last night with just the two of us_ , Keiichi Morisato thought wistfully, as he stared at the top of the Tariki Hongan Temple.  _Kind of funny how a whole week can go by just like that_ .

“Mister Keiichi!” he heard her call from the temple. He turned his head, saw her hurrying to him, her long blond hair streaming in the air, her blue eyes as bright as her smile. He grinned at her.

“Belldandy! All ready?”

She stopped, and held up the thermos and teacups.

“All set.”

“Here, let me...” he reached out, and took the thermos in his left hand, and, slightly more carefully, the teacups in his right.

“Ready, Mr. Keiichi?”

“Ready,” he said, and turned away from her. She slipped her arms under his, held him tightly around the chest, and then flew them both up to the roof of the temple. She held him a bit longer than it took for him to gain his footing. Carefully he lowered himself onto the roof, and she followed suit. He passed her the thermos, then held the teacups as she opened it and poured for the both of them. They clinked their cups together, sidled up next to each other, then took a sip of tea and turned to face west, to watch the setting sun.

“We really should do this more often,” he said, as the sky began to blaze red and orange, reflecting off the glass and steel of the western half of Nekomi, laid out below them.

“Yes, we really should,” she agreed, and leaned against his shoulder. He gulped, turned a bit red... and then shifted his teacup to his right hand and wrapped his left around her. “It is such a beautiful place, up here.”

_No more than the goddess here in my arms_ , he thought with no less wonder.  _But even so-_ “Yeah,” he said out loud, “it really is.”

They sat there just like that, holding each other and sipping tea, for a good long while.

Then, before the sun had even set, before night had fallen, a cold wind out of the south rushed over them. The temple gong rustled and rang out quietly, the trees bent their branches, and leavers swirled about them. It twisted the steam from their tea into strange and fell shapes, and then just as suddenly fell silent.

“Huh,” Belldandy said, turning her suddenly worried face towards the south.

“Belldandy?”

“What a strange wind.”


	5. Chapter 5

NEKOMI

 

Despite the odd wind, the morning dawned bright and clear, so Keiichi and Belldandy rose early enough to meet it. Breakfast atop the temple, at sunrise, proved to be a bit of a production, but nothing a goddess and an engineer couldn't manage. Some, Keiichi figured, would have considered such an action a bother, and not worth the time. But, as he had told Belldandy when she had come through his mirror all those years ago, only a fool would consider her a bother. So breakfast at dawn it was. And Chihiro had given them the day off from Whirlwind, so they had nothing at all to occupy them for the rest of the day.

Nothing at all.

Absolutely nothing whatsoever.

_And so naturally_ , Keiichi thought with a fond sigh as he helped fluff the bedrolls,  _we spend the day cleaning and doing laundry. Ah, well. Skuld and Urd are come coming back today, and Belldandy wants the place spotless._ He stopped for a moment, and listened to her singing quietly on the other side of the laundry line.

Belldandy's sisters, Skuld and Urd, had been recalled to Heaven for what was, apparently, a regular goddess training and refresher course. A week ago. A blessed week, one without explosions, or strange experiments, or all sorts of silliness going on about him. Just him, and Belldandy, finally having some privacy for once. Even Banpei, the robot, had left him alone.

Not, of course, that he had not missed the two ladies over the course of the week. Far from it. After a few years, he had actually gotten used to them, they had even become his friends, but...

It had been  _good_ , really, to have some time with just the two of them. And soon enough, after only seven turns of the world, the old chaos would settle back into his life. On the other hand, Skuld had mostly stopped trying to cut off various parts of him whenever she caught him looking at Belldandy, and Urd had mostly stopped trying to force strange and odd chemicals on him. Emphasis on mostly. Honestly, he would have missed it if they stopped entirely.

At least Skuld had not left him with another gender-bending flan, this time. Just the normal threats and imprecations if he did 'anything to my big sis!'. He had been able to solemnly swear to her, with perfect sincerity, that he would not do anything  _to_ Belldandy. He also had  _not_ missed Urd's knowing smirk when he phrased it that way.

He shook his head and moved on to shaking out one of the towels. He would never enjoy cleaning for its own sake, the way Belldandy did, but on a clear day like this, getting to clean  _with_ her, alongside her... that he could appreciate. Especially with the way her quiet song filled the air and washed over him.

He started to hum along. Belldandy changed the song, then, as if she had briefly smiled wider while singing, and then started to pitch her singing lower. He pitched up his own humming, and they chased each other in song, their tones rising and falling and dancing around until-

Briefly, they matched pitch and key.

The towels and futon mats and shirts and all their laundry suddenly glowed blue and lifted up off the lines. They floated above the ground as he and Belldandy sang together. The shirts and the like settled back to the lines, but the towels and mats straightened flat and snapped up and down. What little dirt and detritus that remained on them flew off, each small fleck glowing with the same blue light as the cloth. At last the song ended, the laundry floated back down to the lines, and the glow faded.

“What... what was that?” Keiichi asked in wonder, backing away from the laundry lines.

“Keiichi, we harmonized!” Belldandy said happily, as she stuck her head out from between two of the mats.

“ _We_ did that?”

“Yes! I had suspected something like that was possible, after you hosted Lind's angel, but...”

“Huh,” he said, then grinned at her. “So I guess we're done with the laundry now?”

“For now, yes. But we'll need to let them cool before we take them inside.”

“Let them cool?”

She pushed through to him, and then beckoned him forward to touch the mats. He walked up, carefully, and laid his palm on one... and quickly drew it back.

“I... whoah! That's... how come this didn't catch on fire, with it being that hot?”

“I was able to regulate the energies released when we harmonized,” Belldandy said. “Also, we were almost done cleaning anyway, so we didn't need to pour all that much energy into the task. Even so, holding the energy back was a bit tricky.”

“How so?”

“Imagine if you were pour a cup of tea from our thermos,” she said. “Now, imagine pouring the same cup of tea from a bucket. Which would be more difficult?”

“From the bucket. Sure, you'd still get the cup of tea, but you'd also pour tea all over the cup, all over the floor...” He trailed off, then nodded. “Or, in this case, heat up a mat so much it almost catches on fire.”

“Exactly!” she said, smiling at him. “A goddess must always be careful when using her powers, because she could easily put more energy into a system than that system could handle. And it would be such a shame to burn your mattress, Mister Keiichi,” she said, and flushed a bit red.

Keiichi flushed a bit red himself.

“So... that's why you don't use your powers for cleaning and all?” he said, perhaps a bit too quickly.

“Among other reasons, yes,” she said, giving the mat and one of the towels a fond pat. “It's good for us to care for our things, by cleaning them directly. And, strictly speaking,” she admitted, “we're not supposed to use powers for this sort of thing.”

“This isn't going to cause a problem, is it?”

“No. This was just a happy accident.” She smiled, and then the blue diamond on her forehead flashed. “Oh! Mister Keiichi, they're coming back!”

“Now?” he said, and followed her as she darted towards the main temple courtyard, where they had set up the traveling circle. “They're early.”

“Very early,” she said, sounding worried. “I hope nothing's gone wrong.”

He caught up with her and took her hand. She flashed him a smile, squeezed his hand, and so they hurried along together. Just in time, too, they had barely reached the traveling circle before two bright lights flashed, and there stood Urd and Skuld.

“Big Sis!” Skuld cried, running forward and launching herself at Belldandy. Keiichi released her hand just in time for Skuld's high-velocity hug.

“Welcome home, Skuld,” Belldandy said, hugging her back. “Urd. Welcome back, both of you!”

“Belldandy, Keiichi,” Urd said, as she walked up to them a bit more sedately. “It's good to be back.”

“Did everything go well, up in Heaven?” Keiichi asked.

“Better than I thought,” Urd admitted, as Skuld had not yet extracted herself from Belldandy. “A lot less boring and mendacious than the last four hundred times. They even managed to get us out early. And yes,” Urd said, pulling out her new license and flashing it at them, “ _I_ checked to make sure they were actually goddess licenses, and nothing another trick of Mara's.”

“Good for you, Urd,” Belldandy said, still holding onto Skuld. “I'd offer refreshment, but we weren't expecting you two for another couple of hours, so...”

“I think we have some tea left over from this morning,” Keiichi said, smiling at the two of them. Skuld may act the horrendous psychopath around him, but he certainly could not fault her for caring that much about Belldandy. “Pretty sure it's still warming in the kitchen.”

“That's right!” Belldandy said. “Shall we go in and have some tea, then?”

“One thing first, Belldandy,” Urd said, pulling an envelope from her dress (and smirking at Keiichi when he blushed when he saw where she pulled it from her dress). She held it out for Belldandy. “The Main Office had me bring this to you.”

“Okay,” she said, uncertainly, as she gently pushed Skuld away and took the letter from Urd. Her eyes widened when she touched it. “The Almighty's own seal! Urd, what's in here?”

“No idea,” Urd said. “They didn't tell me, and they ordered me not to open it.”

“And what happened when you did try to open it?” Keiichi muttered quietly, despite a rising disquiet in his chest. _Please don't be a recall notice. Please don't be a recall notice. Please don't be a recall notice..._

Urd gave a him a look, but said nothing. Keiichi squinted his eyes, and thought that some of her hair looked a bit singed.

Belldandy slid one slender finger under the seal and opened the envelope. She pulled out a single sheet of rune covered paper. Her eyes went wide, again, as she read it.

“What is it, Belldandy?” Keiichi asked, hardly daring to breath, after she had read it through for the third time.

“It... it's a dispensation from the Almighty,” she said, wonderingly. “I am authorized to remove any and all seals upon my power, once, within the next three months.”

“That's it?” Keiichi said.

“They let you say that?” Urd said, at the same time.

“Yes, and yes,” Belldandy said, staring at the letter. “Urd, are you _sure_ nothing has happened up there?”

“If it did, no one told us about it,” Urd said, raising her hands. “Right, Skuld?”

“Urd's right,” Skuld said. “Although... they _did_ make sure we got back down here really quickly. Nothing happened up there, but...”

“Maybe something's happened down here?” Keiichi said, sharing a worried look with Belldandy. _Something that would require you to use your full power?_

“I think Keiichi's right,” Skuld said. “And umm, hi, Keiichi.”

“Welcome back, Skuld,” he said, giving her a little wink. “So what do we do now?”

“For now,” Belldandy said, decisively, as she carefully folded the note and stowed it in one of her jacket pockets, “we will go inside and have tea. If something has happened down here, then it has not come upon us yet. And we'll need time to plan.”

 

* * *

 

“Worried, Keiichi?”

He turned to watch Urd walk out to join him in the inner courtyard. Skuld had monopolized Belldandy upon receiving their tea, and had dragged her off to show and tell with some of the stuff she had brought back from Heaven. Belldandy had given him a somewhat helpless shrug, and he had sent them off with a smile and an understanding nod. And had gone outside to sip his tea.

“A little bit,” he admitted when she reached him. “I _was_ there the last time Belldandy unsealed her powers, after all. And a preemptive authorization for that, from the Almighty? Oh yeah, I'm a bit worried.” He sipped his tea. “On the other hand, I haven't see anything yet that could stand up to three of you.”

“True enough,” Urd admitted with faux-modesty. Then she elbowed him in the arm.

“Urd!”

“But enough of that, it's time for happier talk! We gave you two a _whole week_ alone! What happened? Huh? Huh? I want details!”

He sighed. Somehow, he had known she was going to ask that. But he had hoped she would have waited a bit longer before prying.

“What can I say? We went to work, did some shopping, walked around town... watched the sun rise and the sun set. Talked. Cleaned. Even caught a movie.” He grinned at her. “She even let me take her out to dinner, once, instead of cooking!”

She stared at him.

“Really? That's the best you could do? Watching sunsets and _dinner_?” She shook her head. “Did you at least hold her hand?”

Keiichi took a sip of tea and nodded. She sighed in disgust and sipped her own.

“Even woke up that way, too.”

It was not often that he got to pull one over on Urd. In fact, it had happened maybe once in the whole time since she had come down to Earth. And, the Almighty only knew, she had pulled enough over on _him_ to make up quite a debt. So it was very gratifying to see her spew tea a good three feet.

It was less gratifying to see a few drops of the tea land on top of something invisible, crouching in the yard.


	6. Chapter 6

After all of the strangeness the goddesses had brought into his life, Keiichi had learned to control his reactions to sights like that. Though even then, an invisible something crouching in his yard was something of a novel sight. Nevertheless, his arm only shook slightly as took what would have been a smug sip of tea, and he managed to avoid gibbering in sheer terror and surprise. Urd, for her part, was still sputtering at him.

“You... did you...”

“Urd,” he said, perhaps a bit over sharply, “I think that falls under none of your business.” He smiled. “It isn't the first time, you know.”

“Yeah, but then you _couldn't_ let go of her hand for a whole day,” Urd said. Her eyes flickered towards the courtyard, and he blinked once in response.

“Well, yeah, but that wasn't the time I was thinking about,” he said, but refused to elaborate. Urd made a short, frustrated noise. “Seriously, you and Skuld are great, but... it was a lot fun to have that time, with just the two of us.” He took another sip of tea, and noticed that the thing in the yard had either moved, or had shaken off the droplets.

“Good,” Urd said, quietly. He looked up to find her smiling down at him, her violet eyes soft. Unlike Skuld, Urd had approved of himself and Belldandy from the beginning, and had tried to “encourage” them from the start. However, given her base and off sense of humor, “encourage”, in this case, fully deserved all the scare quotes it could get!

“And,” he added, “things have been a bit... different, since we passed through the Gate. Heck, things were different after that whole 'everybody is turned to stone' thing last year! But after the Gate...” He shook himself. “Well... it settled something in my mind, after we came back out the other side.”

“Once again, good,” Urd said. “Though you're so wishy-washy, I can believe it took the Judgment Gate to get you to make a decision!”

He snorted. Wishy-washy he might be, but he and Belldandy did things their own way. And whatever Urd – or Skuld – might say about their way, it worked for them. Any other details, well... none of anyone's business, really.

Taking care not to hurry too obviously, they finished their tea and went back inside.

“You saw that too, right?” Keiichi said after he had closed the door and set his tea cup on a side table. He kept his voice pitched low, just in the case whatever was outside was trying to listen in on them. He hoped, fervently, that there was only the one thing, or, if there were more, that none of them had made their way into the house.

“Yep,” she said. “Any ideas as to what it was?”

“Yeah, right, like I can identify invisible things in the yard,” he growled as they started towards the sound of Belldandy and Skuld's voices. “Didn't you pick up an energy frequency or anything?”

“Nothing,” Urd said, sounding worried. “I couldn't sense anything at all from it. What worries me, though, is how long it's been here.”

“How so?”

“Because if it hasn't just arrived, then _Belldandy_ never sensed it, either.”

_That_ gave Keiichi a start. She had always been good with seeing through glamors and disguises, especially the ones people cast about themselves. It was part of the reason why she was willing to trust, and could show such kindness, to anyone she met. She had her blind spots, of course, but there was a better than even chance that a malicious glamor would not even register to her. So if the thing outside was invisible even to her, then either she simply had not seen it, it was not malicious, or the glamor was of such power that even she could not pierce it.

“Thank you for that very unpleasant thought,” he said, as they reached Skuld's room. She was telling Belldandy something about a particularly onerous test she and Urd and gone through, but fell silent when he and Urd entered.

“Mister Keiichi?” Belldandy asked. “What's wrong?”

“There's something outside,” he said, quietly. “I don't know what it is or what it wants, but it was out there watching us.”

“Impossible,” Skuld said. “If something was out there, it would have triggered the security system.”

“Well, it was invisible...”

“If it was invisible, how did you see it?” Skuld demanded.

“Um...”

“Because this joker,” Urd said, laying an elbow on top of Keiichi's head, “made me spew my tea.”

“Which just happened to land on the invisible thing outside?”

“Exactly. And yes, I know the odds against that. Which should tell you something about what's likely out there.”

Skuld glowered, for a moment. It was not that she did not believe them, Keiichi knew, but that she was fiercely (and justifiably) proud of her many inventions, including the temple's security system. Clearly, she did not want to believe that something had managed to sneak by past all her precautions and preparations. On the other hand, at least she was only concerned about  _that_ , and did not seem to be think about-

“Wait, just how _did_ Keiichi make you spew your tea?” she demanded, narrowing her eyes at the both of them.

And  _there_ was the question. Keiichi sighed, and tried to figure out a way to explain  _that_ without the inevitable explosion.

“Skuld, never mind that,” Belldandy said, calmly, and rose to her feet.

“Big sis...?”

“Urd, this invisible thing you two saw, do you think it was invisible due to a technological device, or due to magic?”

“Magic, I'd have to say,” Urd said after a moment's thought. “Whatever it was, it was very well hidden; even the power signature of cloak was cloaked, and it's a lot harder to hide technology from us than it is to hide magic.”

“Stacked glamors,” Belldandy said, nodding. “Skuld, the security system is turned on, correct? And Banpei is at the ready?”

“Um, yes? I didn't turn him off, just told him not to attack Keiichi- I mean, um...” She blushed and looked down.

“And thanks for that, Skuld,” Keiichi said, as sincerely and gravely as he could manage. “Really.”

She smiled, lightly, and shrugged.

“Just don't get used to it, buster!”

“Wouldn't dream of it.”

“Mister Keiichi, everyone,” Belldandy said, drawing their attention. “I am going to attempt a revealing and cleansing spell, to try and see how many of the invisible things are near here. I hope it will not come to a fight, but... Urd, Skuld, be ready?”

“You got it.”

“Mister Keiichi,” she said, turning to him. He waited, expectantly, with a slight smile, and she smiled at him in turn. “I would ask you to get ready to run, but... especially if it became necessary, I don't think you would.”

“What, run away and leave you to face whatever's out there alone?” He grinned. “Not a chance, Belldandy. My place is here, by your side.”

“I'm glad,” she said, then brought her hands together and bowed her head. A glow surrounded her, and lit up the blue diamonds on her forehead and on her cheeks. A humming and a thrumming, like gently pluck strings, filled the room and washed over them. Holy Bell, her angel, spilled out of her back and hovered over Belldandy in the same pose, yet transparent and spectral. He could feel the power flowing into and out of her, a subtle vibration and change in the air, like the time his class had visited the power plant, or the time they had built a Van de Graaf generator.

“Spirits of lights that pierce the shadows,” she intoned, with a new power and resonance to her voice, “voices of the wind which comes and cleanses, hear my request! Show all secrets, banish all shadows! Cleanse, and reveal!”

At her last cry the blue nimbus which had surrounded flared and coalesced into a hemisphere of light and energy, shifting between blue and green and purple. The hemisphere expanded, filling the room, then moving beyond to cover, he knew from past experience, the entirety of the temple grounds. Heck, if past experience was any indication, the energy would soon wash over all of Nekomi, then onto Yokohama and Tokyo. In fact-

Alarms started blaring, and a red light flashed. The sounds of rocket launches and explosions came to to them from outside.

“What the-” Urd said, as Skuld rushed over to her workbench and called up a hologram of the temple grounds.

“It looks like there wasn't just one invisible thing out there, there were a lot of them!” she said, looking fearfully all the little red dots crawling over the ground. “And they're hostile. Banpei is engaging, but I don't-” she stopped having seen something on the map. “The house! They're in the house! They're in-” She looked up.

Keiichi followed her gaze, saw something vaguely human shaped, all black and silver, clinging to the rafters and staring down at them. It turned its gaze towards Skuld, glowing red eyes unchanging, and started to release.

“No!” he cried, charging forward and scooping up the young goddess, as the thing tried to drop down on top of her. It landed just behind him, crashing into the floor, and from the sound of it, smashing her workbench.

“Down!” Skuld cried, peering over his shoulder. He dove to the floor, trying to keep himself between Skuld and the thing. He felt a little breeze as what was probably the thing's arm passed through where his head had been, and then he slid across the floor and slammed into the wall. He rolled over, so Skuld was against the wall and he had his back to the thing. He turned his head as far as he could, saw it looming over him about to strike again, felt that it looked familiar, for some reason-

Then a blue light flared behind it, and the thing crumpled to the ground.

“Keep your hands _off of him!_ ” Belldandy cried out. “Mister Keiichi! Skuld! Are you okay?”

He looked down at Skuld, who nodded.

“We're good!” he called out. “Thanks for the- Belldandy! The door!” He saw movement, more of the things, trying to press into Skuld's room. With only a nod between them, Belldandy and Urd took up positions on either side of the door, and started driving the things back with their magic. He rolled away from the wall and let Skuld up.

“You okay?” he asked, a bit redundantly. She gave him a Look, but then nodded again.

“Yeah, I'm good.”

“Hey, thanks for the warning.”

“Thanks for the tackle. What _are_ these things?”

He sat up and stared at the fallen attacker. It was primarily black in color, with silver armor on the arms and legs, and around the neck and upper chest. It was split open in some places, revealing melted wires and fused internal mechanics. There was an orange marking on the face, but that had partially burned off; whatever spell Belldandy had struck it with had fried the thing from the inside out. Even so, it looked awfully familiar...

“Well, it's a robot...”

“No kidding, genius,” Skuld said. “But who-”

“Wait! I know what these are!” he said, standing up in excitement. “Some madman used them to take over Jump City, in America, about three years ago. It was all over the news.”

“So what are they doing in Japan?” Skuld said, standing up.

“That's... a very good question,” he said, looking from the robot to the door to the ladies holding the door. “I'd kinda like to know that myself.” He shrugged. “Well, we know what they are, so... any bright ideas on how to fight 'em?”

“I think we can hold them here for a while longer,” Urd called out over the fighting. Keiichi watched as a bold from her hand pierced three of the robots through and through. She and Belldandy had developed a pretty effective one-two combination: Belldandy threw up a shield which kept the robots from coming through the door, stacking them up in the hallway, while Urd blasted them apart by twos and threes. “But not indefinitely, though,” she said with a grunt.

“Actually, if you two could find someway to barricade the door, it would be very helpful,” Belldandy said through clenched teeth.

“On it, Belldandy,” Keiichi said, and started to step away from the wall. “Skuld, lets see if we can rig something up with this st-”

She grabbed his sleeve.

“Keiichi...”

“What is it?”

“Banpei's stopped firing.”

He stopped and listenedd. Sure enough, he could no longer hear the sounds of rocket fire and explosions, which had so far punctuated the whole battle. In fact, the only sounds of battle he could hear were those coming from the door.

“Maybe that means he won?” he said hopefully. But even he knew that if Banpei had succeeded, the brave (or psychopathic) little robot would have moved to help clear the house. So the lack of rocket fire meant, most likely, that Banpei had been overwhelmed.

“I think... I think that means it's up to us,” Skuld said.

“The we'd-”

Before he could finish robot arms crashed through the thin wall, wrapped around him and Skuld, and flung them and the remains of the wall out into the yard.


End file.
